The story says that it is "not allowed to be used in production". That is not correct. Instead, it works like this (from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/faqs-oraclesolaris11express-185609.pdf):

* If you want to use it in production, you need to purchase support (for example "Oracle Solaris Premier Subscription for non-Oracle hardware")
* If you don't buy the support contract, you can use it for evaluation and development

Pay for production use, free for other use.

Wow. The terms "Perl" and "ease of development" in the same sentence.

But, but... that's the way it already is!?

Today, Oracle offers a free JVM, which is the one they got from Sun. They also offer the JRockit JVM which has "performance tuning and tie-ins with Oracle's middleware". It's a "premium" JVM, and you have to pay to get it. If anything changes, it's the fact that they want both of them to work off the same codebase, bringing at least some of JRockits premiumness into the commodity JVM.

Move along, nothing to see, except a world full of distrust and hostility.

Larry just said, on the webcast, that they will be hiring about 2000 people, and that "this is twice as many as we will be firing. We're hiring, not firing".

Some statistics from http://www.xmag.no/id/130.0 (dated December 2007):

- To produce/breed/farm 600.000 tonnes of salmon, Norway uses approximately 1 tonne of antibiotics
- To produce a similar amount of salmon, Chile uses approximately 1.200 tonnes of antibiotics

(The article is really about the social responsibility of Norwegian salmon farmers operating in Chile, and the antibiotics statistics are there to demonstrate that these farmers operate differently and under different rules in Chile than in Norway.)

The political role of Norwegian media is very much an individual opinion, and opinions vary. This compares very much to the discussion of for example Fox News: Are they "tough and vibrant", or are they "not a news organization" (quotes from other entries in this story). I'd wager that in Noway, most people disagree with the opinion voiced above, but your milage may vary.

Government subsidies take many forms. The major part of press subsidies in Norway is a tax break, where there are little to no opportunity for political intervention, but there is also a significant flow of direct money.

Svirre seems to believe that the largest takers of subsidies are the same that are "publishing fronts for [the] four leftist political parties". Ignoring the discussion of "leftist", this is factually wrong. The number 2 receiver is the newspaper called "Vårt Land", the major christian conservative newspaper in Norway. Google translate says this about their self-proclaimed mission: "Vårt land should be an independent daily newspaper for people who want to read about the most significant is happening, and about faith's role in this. The newspaper will administer the Christian faith and thought, and help to ensure that this will dominate the society and people's lives and choices."

It is a fact that Norwegian newspapers enjoy readership that is amongst the highest in the world, with 550 600 copies are sold per 1000 inhabitants. This may or may not be related to the government subsidies.